Saturday 14th November

Number One – Can’t Remember, Don’t Know – For the first three or four years I was fostered and have no memories of where I was living, though my mother had me most weekends so I must have been taken then to Grandma Allard’s house (my Mum was brought up by her Grandmother not her Mother) at Ipswich Road.  This was (from later memories) a narrow and dark old Victorian terraced house with chickens in the back yard, no indoor bathroom and a twisty old staircase leading out of the living room.  I can just about remember Grandma Allard on an old chaise long, and she had her hair wound up in a bun on her head.  She died when I was about 8.

Number Two – 91 Bury Road.  My Dad’s parents house.  A 30’s council house, again terraced but very spacious with a front room, only used at Christmas and Easter, an outdoor toilet and a tin bath in front of the coal fire.  We lived in the back living room, a smallish room with two armchairs, a sofa and a table and four chairs and a sideboard, a wireless on its own table with a yellow dial with exotic locations Paris, Berlin and Hilversum.  I cannot actually remember living there ( from three till five) but spent many happy weekends there as I grew up. It always seemed a happy house, and maybe I was happier there than I ever have been since.  My sister was born there but we moved quite quickly into our very own council house…

Number Three – 6 Silverdale Avenue.  This was a brand new house.  Built as a stopgap, it was breeze block and only meant to last about ten years, but lasted almost 50 in the end.  Semi-detached with a generous front and back garden, it was a really decent, if bloody cold, house.  One coal fire and a paraffin heater in the kitchen, we later got storage heaters upstairs but I can remember ice on the inside of the windows.  It was on a brand new estate and there was a green right in front of our house where we played football and cricket.  Most of the time I was happy in this house, and as the oldest boy I had the second biggest bedroom (my sister had a tiny box room) with a dressing table, a wardrobe and a desk and a bookshelf I rapidly filled up with books. But I was unhappy in my teens and I got rebellious and couldn’t wait to leave.  It was always going to be London where, little did I know, my troubles would really begin.